1900-1919

The new Bench early on struggled to establish rules
of law that would provide guidance as to the Court’s
power to review lower court cases. That power proved very
broad, and eventually, in 1945, the Court was fully endowed
with the power to make new findings of fact as well as
of law.

Certain early appeals to reach the Court were the product
of the same fervor for reform that led to the Court’s
creation. These were cases by those former city police
officers whom the new “firebrand” Police Commissioner,
Theodore Roosevelt, had dismissed from the force for corruption
or incompetence. Roosevelt, the youngest Police Commissioner
in New York’s history, succeeded in creating new
standards
and a new discipline in the police force.

Over the coming decades,
reformers would come to challenge the very heart of
the power structure that governed New York. Meanwhile,
they would sigh with relief when the notoriously corrupt
attorney, Abraham Hummell, was disbarred by the Appellate
Division. For decades Hummell and his partner, William
Howe, had corrupted witnesses and jurors alike to obtain
an impressive and highly suspect acquittal rate in criminal
cases. Hummell subsequently left the country.

The coming century seemed to hold great promise for
the Court and for New York. Young Americans were coming
from rural areas to find better-paying work in the City,
and making their homes in buildings newly divided into
separate apartments. At the same time, a great immigrant
wave from Southern and Eastern Europe multiplied the
City’s population. In 1900 that population was
3.4 million; thirty years later it had increased to
over 7 million. This growth necessitated an expansion
of the City’s superstructure and public transportation.

In 1902, the Flatiron Building was built on Broadway
and Fifth Avenue, opposite the Appellate Division Courthouse. At 21 stories, it became the symbol of the New York
skyline.

The growth of the City resonated in several
cases heard in the courtroom at 21 Madison Avenue. A
1909 plan to upgrade the City’s water supply resulted
in litigation, as did a 1920 dispute over the contract
to build the East River Bridge. The Court heard and
decided cases concerning the growth of railroads, the
subway system, the building of the 42nd Street library,
and the regulation of motorized taxi fares. In a 1900
case, the Appellate Division had permitted the Soldiers’
and Sailors’ Memorial to be placed in Riverside
Park.

One result of the growing population of
industrial workers was the growth of the New York labor
union movement. The international Ladies Garment Workers
Union, founded in 1900, had been unable to prevent widespread
sweatshop conditions of the sort that resulted in the
tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. But in
1914, the Appellate Division upheld that portion of the
New York State Labor Law that forbade factory work done
by women after 10 PM or before 6 AM. Union activity by
the ILGWU and others was carefully monitored by the the
Court.